cpu meter

Question

i have a brand new 531 with a dual athlon processor & 2 gigs of ram. i have the cpu meter running on the widgets & while i am not convinced that this is the most accurate reflection of system performace ... my ram meter remains in the mid-50s all the time.

when i'm running multiple apps, starting up something like photoshop or itunes, the cpu usage meter will fluctuate wildly (it fluctuates all the time, but there are times it is much more frenetic). the ram usage meter seemingly never budges. how accurate is this meter? do i need to configure something to take advantage of my full two gigs of ram?

i hate to think i'm only using half of the ram i paid good money for.

thanks in advance.

Message Edited by littlealaska on 07-30-2007 09:37 AM

MRF4700 · Answer

What operating system are you running on the 531?

ctalia4000 · Answer

i hate to thing i'm only using half of the ram i paid good money for.

Low numbers are good. If your computer used all of its RAM you would get a out of memory message.

Here is information about memory address, and RAM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_address

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM

You can see the RAM the computer is using by going to Start>Accessories>System Tools> System Information.

Even the CPU meter is using RAM.

littlealaska · Answer

the operating system is vista.

i did check the performance monitor (ctrl+alt+del style) & noticed the same results as the cpu monitor, so perhaps this is accurate. i certainly am happy that i'm not dipping into virtual ram, or whatever that's called, but i thought that the ram usage would fluctuate much like the cpu processing.

the "system information" check shows that i've got 1,981.88 MB of total physical memory but only 999.91 MB of available physical memory. this is roughly 50% of my ram, correct (same as the performance monitors)? is there some way to config the computer so it has access to the total physical memory ... or is that not a good idea?

thanks for the help.

Message Edited by littlealaska on 07-30-2007 09:48 AM

ae38cb5bb8b0410 · Answer

Your other memory is being used for graphics, that's how Vista manages memory. I have 3GB of ram but most of the time it shows 2GB available. Out of 3GB 1535mb shows as total available graphics memory. 1279 shared system memory and 256mb dedicated memory (your video card's). To see this info on your system check your WEI score and click on view and print details, it gives you a breakdown for your system. Also, the new Nvidia Forceware drivers released last week add like 512mb to the graphics memory available. Before last weeks update I was showing 766mb shared memory, after the update 1279mb. Welcome to Vista. Read this for more info:   http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/graphicsmemory.mspx

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cpu meter

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